Alvaro Gonzalez worked 16,500 hours in a little over two years providing legal work for Dual Australia, his wife said today.

“He was working probably up to 18 hours a day, seven days a week,” Josie Gonzalez, 45, told the County Court of Victoria in Melbourne.

He charged Dual $1000 an hour despite having less than two years’ legal experience.

Dual alleges that between March 2011 and May 2013 Josie Gonzalez, the company’s national claims manager, approved fraudulent invoices for $17.4 million submitted by Jaag Lawyers, a law firm set up by the couple. Alvaro Gonzalez was the firm’s only employee and Josie was a director.

The couple have pleaded not guilty to 14 counts each of obtaining a financial advantage by deception.

Prosecutor Andrew Grant today showed the jury an email from Josie Gonzalez instructing other lawyers that their fees were too high. This was even though they were half the hourly rate her husband was charging Dual.

Law firm Norton Rose was told its suggested rates of $550 an hour and $515 an hour for work by two partners was too high. Josie Gonzalez proposed they lower these rates to $500 an hour and $460 an hour.

She said a senior associate should be paid $400 an hour, not the $425 an hour Norton Rose suggested.

“Dual considers the hourly rates…are higher than is reasonable for such matters,” she wrote in an email.

Mr Grant also showed documentation that Moray & Agnew partner Peter Tredinnick charged Dual $380 an hour.

In July 2012, Josie Gonzalez emailed Dual claims administrator Olga Karakotina, and told her 67 paid invoices from Jaag needed to be recoded as “insured’s own”.

“Can you please ensure to close the file again after,” she wrote.

This came as Jiyan Zora, a London-based senior claims executive at Dual’s underwriter Arch, questioned $9 million in legal spend, which Josie Gonzalez agreed had all been paid to Jaag.

Asked on December 4 2012 for a breakdown of legal spend segregated by law firm, Josie Gonzalez produced a bar chart listing 10 other law firms.

Jaag Lawyers was not named, but she suggested that the term “counsel fees” heading the chart was a reference to Jaag that could be easily understood.

She had earlier asked that “counsel” always be entered into Dual’s accounting system under “payee” instead of naming Jaag each time the firm was paid.

She admitted there was nothing to suggest Alvaro had worked on emails sent by her that she says he spent hours researching and writing “the body” of.

Dual disputes that any claims management or legal services were provided by Jaag or Alvaro Gonzalez.

While Josie Gonzalez was on maternity leave in mid-2013, Dual’s Olga Karakotina performed an ASIC search on Jaag Lawyers and discovered the firm was associated with Josie and Alvaro Gonzalez.

She immediately called an emergency meeting on the Queen’s Birthday weekend to alert Dual Australia CEO Damien Coates and financial director Peter Bailey.

The couple’s assets were frozen shortly after and their house thoroughly searched and documents seized.

In September 2013 Mr and Mrs Gonzalez agreed to repay all the money. They sold a $4.4 million house in Kew and a property in Carlton North and returned all money held in their bank account.

“That house didn’t mean anything to us,” Josie Gonzalez told the court. “What mattered was our family, our children, my parents.

“Money, that doesn’t matter to us. What mattered was our two little girls, our well-being, my family and my husband’s family.

“The stress and enormous situation we were under – I would not wish it upon anybody, ever.”

Gonzalez said the couple were enduring tough circumstances, living in her mother's house and seeing multiple "false" stories in the media when they returned the funds.

"We were being bullied in the media by Damien Coates," she said.

The trial continues next week.